More arrests have befallen the leadership of NXIVM, the “Executive Success Program” based in Albany, New York, with reported cult-like tendencies. On Tuesday afternoon, Clare Bronfman, Seagram’s heiress and the organization’s alleged bankroller, will be arraigned in Brooklyn federal court on racketeering conspiracy charges, along with other top leadership including Nancy and Lauren Salzman and Kathy Russell, NXIVM’s bookkeeper. The U.S. attorney’s office for New York’s Eastern District confirmed Tuesday’s arrests to the Albany bureau of Democrat and Chronicle, a branch of USA Today (Sara Bronfman, Clare’s sister and the other Seagram’s heiress involved in the organization, was not mentioned).

The group’s leader, Keith Raniere, was arrested in March after a manhunt led federal agents to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Law enforcement arrested his alleged lieutenant and main recruiter, Smallville actress Allison Mack, a month later in Brooklyn. Prior to the arrests, former members came forward to The New York Times with accounts of doctors branding women with Raniere and Mack’s initials. Recruits to an inner circle of NXIVM members that called itself the Dominus Obsequious Sororium, or D.O.S., played “slaves” to their “masters,” and were urged to go on “near-starvation diets,” per the Times.

Raniere and Mack are both awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, and both have pleaded not guilty. One of Raniere’s lawyers, Paul DerOhannesian,previously told Vanity Fair, “Many independent, smart, curious adult women participated in a search for happiness, fulfillment, and meaning exercising the freedom of choice enjoyed by every United States citizen. The prosecution advances an adventuresome legal theory without precedent to assert the emotionally charged crime of ‘sex-trafficking.’” His lawyer Marc Agnifilo added at the time, “Mr. Raniere will fight these groundless charges and will prevail.”

In 2010, Vanity Fair’s U.K. edition covered the Bronfman sisters and their rift with their family, especially their father, former Seagram’s C.E.O. Edgar Bronfman Sr. The sisters’ legal troubles at the time revealed alleged details about the millions of dollars that went to “help finance NXIVM and the alleged investment schemes of its leader, a 50-year-old man by the name of Keith Raniere.” According to legal filings and public documents nearly a decade ago, “as much as $150 million was taken out of the Bronfmans’ trusts and bank accounts, including $66 million allegedly used to cover Raniere’s failed bets in the commodities market, $30 million to buy real estate in Los Angeles and around Albany, $11 million for a 22-seat, two-engine Canadair CL-600 jet, and millions more to support a barrage of lawsuits across the country against NXIVM’s enemies.”

Bronfman’s attorney, Susan R. Necheles, told Vanity Fair in a statement, “Clare Bronfman did nothing wrong. NXIVM was not a criminal enterprise but instead was an organization that helped thousands of people. The charges against Clare are the result of government overreaching and charging an individual with crimes just because the government disagrees with some beliefs taught by NXIVM and held by Clare. This is not how things should be done in America. We are confident that Clare will be exonerated.”

Russell’s lawyer declined to comment to the New York Post, and the attorney for the Salzmans did not immediately respond to Vanity Fair’s request for comment.

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